Viewers of a certain age and taste will be getting excited about the return to action last week of Star Trek: Picard (Prime Video), whose third and final season promises to bring to an end the adventures of a crew which first set out in 1987.
The original TNG, as fans know it, managed to turn initial critical disapproval at the stiff acting and odd plotlines into a beloved and diverse series which lasted for seven series and four spin-off films in the Star Trek universe.
It also made an international star of Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart, whose distinctively bald-headed appearance as captain Jean-Luc Picard gave way from a most un-James T Kirk-like stern grumpiness to a kind of swashbuckling uncle persona which he’s dined out on – and got work from – for three decades.
Now Stewart is 82 years old, and his commitment to three series of what must be a challenging shooting schedule is admirable. It also has the potential to bring the curtain down on an impressive career by saying goodbye to the role which made it.
Picard’s finale
Yet Picard’s finale has a lot of work to do. The first series in 2020 was enjoyable enough, perhaps a little drawn-out and overcomplicated in places, but it freshened up the old saga with a new cast and a lot of invention and humour.
Last year’s second season, though, was sadly an absolute dog’s dinner of a show. Cramming in time travel and alternate universes, the story was overblown and cliché-filled, and wasted all of its actors’ talents on nothing much of note. There was even a cheap-looking battle in a Los Angeles car park, as though we were suddenly in an episode of The A-Team.
Expectation, then, is near rock bottom for the grand finale, although it was raised off the floor by the announcement that it’s going to involve a reunion for the entire cast of The Next Generation, which you would hope at the very least a supreme effort would be made for.
Last week’s first episode, in which case, was a promising start, with Stewart’s retired Admiral Picard and Jonathan Frakes’ irascible and bristle-bearded former second-in-command William Riker attempting to blag passage to the far reaches of the Federation to answer a distress call from unheard-from former comrade Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden).
Old friend
They have help from another old friend, Seven-of-Nine (Jeri Ryan), now First Officer on the USS Titan, but are hindered by its captain, Liam Shaw, who Todd Stashwick plays with just the right level of glib unpleasantness.
When they reach their destination, they find Crusher frozen in a healing chamber and her son Jack (Ed Speleers) – revealed in the second episode to be Picard’s son too – on the run from heavily-armed intergalactic bounty hunters.
It’s an exciting beginning, and the arrival of Klingon crewmate Worf (Michael Dorn) as a sword-wielding assassin in the second episode adds to the thrill. But otherwise, that episode dragged, an interminable outer space stand-off which broke off into conversational time-wasting and killed the jeopardy. A generation depends on it doing better than this in weeks to come.
